Sean WallaceJones for IAAF
18 September 2000 - Sydney - After withdrawing from the last meeting of the IAAF Golden League in Berlin due to a slight muscle twinge – with a share of the Jackpot nonetheless assured – Gail Devers is back on winning form.
Training today at the warm-up facilities in the Sydney Olympic Park, Devers shows no signs of the two weeks break that she has had to make in her lead-up to the Olympics.
The thirty-four year old from Seattle made a series of practice starts, literally bursting from the blocks and powering over five practice hurdles before heading back to the start, relaxing a couple of minutes and doing it all over again.
"I got in a couple of days ago," says Devers," and now it’s all work up to race day.
"I feel pretty good, but it’s a little tough today."
And then on a more feminine note, she notices the dark blue and gold speckled nail enamel of Carol Lewis: "Oh, that’s a really great colour, I love it!"
Devers herself is sporting a brilliant turquoise/green polish – also gold specked and the famous talons are growing back, perhaps in preparation for the Olympic fray to come.
It can be a battle royal and Devers looks as ready as any of her potential opponents to win the day.
After missing out in the US Trials for the 100m flat, Gail can concentrate fully on the 100m hurdles and has every intention of taking the Olympic gold medal.
And according to coach Bobby Kersee, Devers could well do better than that.
"Gail could run the record. She ran 12.33 in Sacramento and it was not a perfect race.
"She lost time coming out of the blocks and her rhythm wasn’t really right. I reckon that if we correct those problems she can run 18-24 hundredths faster than she did in Sacramento."
Taking the lower of those two figures, Devers would knock 6 hundredths of the 12.21 of Yordanka Donkova, that has stood since 1988.
"She’s got to get rhythm and balance," continues Kersee, "first Gail’s got to concentrate on her technique and get over the hurdles and then we can concentrate on her speed. the fact that she has to do just the hurdles is easier on her body. It's a blessing in disguise"
Does the shadow of 1992 - when Devers clipped the last hurdle and made a spectacular fall when well ahead of the rest of the field, finally coming fifth – still haunt her?
"I do not think that it is really on her mind all the time, but at the same time I don’t think that you can ever forget something like that. We haven’t really talked about it a lot, but I think it that having something like that in the back of your mind makes it pretty sure that you’re not going to do the same thing again"
Although Devers looks seriously on top of the game at the moment, Kersee thinks that the retirement of Ludmila Engquist could create a vacuum that is going to draw new talent.
"It’s always like that," reflects coach Kersee. "Someone leaves and the new talent just sort of appears. It’s a natural process.
"And at the Olympics you can never tell what’s going to happen."
But even as he says it, you can feel that he is confident that his talented charge is ready to face any challenge that comes her way and win that coveted Olympic gold in the hurdles - in record time.